Miami and Virginia Tech begin their final football season in the Big East.

NEWTON, Mass. (AP) – Boston College running back Derrick Knight can’t wait to play Miami and Virginia Tech.

Not because the two schools are bolting the Big East for the Atlantic Coast Conference and he wants to make them pay, but because it’s his last chance to beat them before he graduates.

“I would like one shot at them,” he said Friday at Boston College’s football media day. “That’s all you can ask for.”

One shot is all he’ll get.

Knight is a fifth-year senior, having sat out the 1999 season as a redshirt, so he is in his last year of eligibility. Boston College will play Miami in its fourth game of the season, on Sept. 20, and Virginia Tech in the Eagles’ finale on Nov. 22.

If BC plays them in the future, it would be as a non-conference game. The two schools will be joining the ACC after this season, the culmination of their messy divorce from the Big East; Boston College and Syracuse had expected to go with Miami to form a 12-team superconference, but after political maneuvering the ACC decided to invite Virginia Tech instead.

That will leave the Big East without its two top football schools. But BC coach Tom O’Brien said he won’t use the schools’ defections to try to motivate his players.

“It would always be nice to get a victory over one of them,” he said. “It has nothing to do with what went on this summer. It has to do with: we haven’t beaten them. That’s more important than what went on this summer.”

BC has not beaten either Miami or Virginia Tech since O’Brien took over in 1997. In fact, the Eagles have not beaten Tech since 1995, and they have not beaten Miami since Doug Flutie’s desperation pass as time expired in the 1984 game.

Although Miami has a 21-3 edge in the series – they only started playing annually in 1993 – BC has come close in the last four games at Alumni Stadium. Two years ago, Miami was the top-ranked team in the country when, with BC on the verge of scoring the game-winner in the final minute, the Hurricanes won on an interception that bounced off a defensive back’s knee.

“It’s still very sore. We try not to think about it,” Knight said. “But I accept that loss. We battled them right down to the wire and gave it our best effort. I’ll take that over a game where we bailed out.”

AP-ES-08-08-03 1655EDT